2 Debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
4 Denis Joseph Barrow (djbarrow@de.ibm.com,barrow_dj@yahoo.com)
5 Copyright (C) 2000-2001 IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, IBM Corporation
6 Best viewed with fixed width fonts
10 This document is intended to give a good overview of how to debug
11 Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture. It isn't intended as a complete reference & not a
12 tutorial on the fundamentals of C & assembly. It doesn't go into
13 390 IO in any detail. It is intended to complement the documents in the
14 reference section below & any other worthwhile references you get.
16 It is intended like the Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 Reference Summary
17 to be printed out & used as a quick cheat sheet self help style reference when
23 Address Spaces on Intel Linux
24 Address Spaces on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
25 The Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture Kernel Task Structure
26 Register Usage & Stackframes on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
27 A sample program with comments
28 Compiling programs for debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
29 Figuring out gcc compile errors
35 s/390 & z/Architecture IO Overview
36 Debugging IO on s/390 & z/Architecture under VM
37 GDB on s/390 & z/Architecture
38 Stack chaining in gdb by hand
43 Starting points for debugging scripting languages etc.
51 The current architectures have the following registers.
53 16 General propose registers, 32 bit on s/390 64 bit on z/Architecture, r0-r15 or gpr0-gpr15 used for arithmetic & addressing.
55 16 Control registers, 32 bit on s/390 64 bit on z/Architecture, ( cr0-cr15 kernel usage only ) used for memory management,
56 interrupt control,debugging control etc.
58 16 Access registers ( ar0-ar15 ) 32 bit on s/390 & z/Architecture
59 not used by normal programs but potentially could
60 be used as temporary storage. Their main purpose is their 1 to 1
61 association with general purpose registers and are used in
62 the kernel for copying data between kernel & user address spaces.
63 Access register 0 ( & access register 1 on z/Architecture ( needs 64 bit
64 pointer ) ) is currently used by the pthread library as a pointer to
65 the current running threads private area.
67 16 64 bit floating point registers (fp0-fp15 ) IEEE & HFP floating
68 point format compliant on G5 upwards & a Floating point control reg (FPC)
69 4 64 bit registers (fp0,fp2,fp4 & fp6) HFP only on older machines.
71 Linux (currently) always uses IEEE & emulates G5 IEEE format on older machines,
72 ( provided the kernel is configured for this ).
75 The PSW is the most important register on the machine it
76 is 64 bit on s/390 & 128 bit on z/Architecture & serves the roles of
77 a program counter (pc), condition code register,memory space designator.
78 In IBM standard notation I am counting bit 0 as the MSB.
79 It has several advantages over a normal program counter
80 in that you can change address translation & program counter
81 in a single instruction. To change address translation,
82 e.g. switching address translation off requires that you
83 have a logical=physical mapping for the address you are
88 0 0 Reserved ( must be 0 ) otherwise specification exception occurs.
90 1 1 Program Event Recording 1 PER enabled,
91 PER is used to facilitate debugging e.g. single stepping.
93 2-4 2-4 Reserved ( must be 0 ).
95 5 5 Dynamic address translation 1=DAT on.
97 6 6 Input/Output interrupt Mask
99 7 7 External interrupt Mask used primarily for interprocessor signalling &
102 8-11 8-11 PSW Key used for complex memory protection mechanism not used under linux
104 12 12 1 on s/390 0 on z/Architecture
106 13 13 Machine Check Mask 1=enable machine check interrupts
108 14 14 Wait State set this to 1 to stop the processor except for interrupts & give
109 time to other LPARS used in CPU idle in the kernel to increase overall
110 usage of processor resources.
112 15 15 Problem state ( if set to 1 certain instructions are disabled )
113 all linux user programs run with this bit 1
114 ( useful info for debugging under VM ).
116 16-17 16-17 Address Space Control
118 00 Primary Space Mode when DAT on
119 The linux kernel currently runs in this mode, CR1 is affiliated with
120 this mode & points to the primary segment table origin etc.
122 01 Access register mode this mode is used in functions to
123 copy data between kernel & user space.
125 10 Secondary space mode not used in linux however CR7 the
126 register affiliated with this mode is & this & normally
127 CR13=CR7 to allow us to copy data between kernel & user space.
128 We do this as follows:
129 We set ar2 to 0 to designate its
130 affiliated gpr ( gpr2 )to point to primary=kernel space.
131 We set ar4 to 1 to designate its
132 affiliated gpr ( gpr4 ) to point to secondary=home=user space
133 & then essentially do a memcopy(gpr2,gpr4,size) to
134 copy data between the address spaces, the reason we use home space for the
135 kernel & don't keep secondary space free is that code will not run in
138 11 Home Space Mode all user programs run in this mode.
139 it is affiliated with CR13.
141 18-19 18-19 Condition codes (CC)
143 20 20 Fixed point overflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event
146 21 21 Decimal overflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
149 22 22 Exponent underflow mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
152 23 23 Significance Mask if 1=FPU exceptions for this event occur
155 24-31 24-30 Reserved Must be 0.
157 31 Extended Addressing Mode
158 32 Basic Addressing Mode
159 Used to set addressing mode
165 32 1=31 bit addressing mode 0=24 bit addressing mode (for backward
166 compatibility), linux always runs with this bit set to 1
168 33-64 Instruction address.
169 33-63 Reserved must be 0
171 In 24 bits mode bits 64-103=0 bits 104-127 Address
172 In 31 bits mode bits 64-96=0 bits 97-127 Address
173 Note: unlike 31 bit mode on s/390 bit 96 must be zero
174 when loading the address with LPSWE otherwise a
175 specification exception occurs, LPSW is fully backward
181 This per cpu memory area is too intimately tied to the processor not to mention.
182 It exists between the real addresses 0-4096 on s/390 & 0-8192 z/Architecture & is exchanged
183 with a 1 page on s/390 or 2 pages on z/Architecture in absolute storage by the set
184 prefix instruction in linux'es startup.
185 This page is mapped to a different prefix for each processor in an SMP configuration
186 ( assuming the os designer is sane of course :-) ).
187 Bytes 0-512 ( 200 hex ) on s/390 & 0-512,4096-4544,4604-5119 currently on z/Architecture
188 are used by the processor itself for holding such information as exception indications &
189 entry points for exceptions.
190 Bytes after 0xc00 hex are used by linux for per processor globals on s/390 & z/Architecture
191 ( there is a gap on z/Architecture too currently between 0xc00 & 1000 which linux uses ).
192 The closest thing to this on traditional architectures is the interrupt
193 vector table. This is a good thing & does simplify some of the kernel coding
194 however it means that we now cannot catch stray NULL pointers in the
195 kernel without hard coded checks.
199 Address Spaces on Intel Linux
200 =============================
202 The traditional Intel Linux is approximately mapped as follows forgive
204 0xFFFFFFFF 4GB Himem *****************
208 ***************** ****************
209 User Space Himem (typically 0xC0000000 3GB )* User Stack * * *
210 ***************** * *
211 * Shared Libs * * Next Process *
212 ***************** * to *
218 0x00000000 ***************** ****************
220 Now it is easy to see that on Intel it is quite easy to recognise a kernel address
221 as being one greater than user space himem ( in this case 0xC0000000).
222 & addresses of less than this are the ones in the current running program on this
223 processor ( if an smp box ).
224 If using the virtual machine ( VM ) as a debugger it is quite difficult to
225 know which user process is running as the address space you are looking at
226 could be from any process in the run queue.
228 The limitation of Intels addressing technique is that the linux
229 kernel uses a very simple real address to virtual addressing technique
230 of Real Address=Virtual Address-User Space Himem.
231 This means that on Intel the kernel linux can typically only address
232 Himem=0xFFFFFFFF-0xC0000000=1GB & this is all the RAM these machines
234 They can lower User Himem to 2GB or lower & thus be
235 able to use 2GB of RAM however this shrinks the maximum size
236 of User Space from 3GB to 2GB they have a no win limit of 4GB unless
240 On 390 our limitations & strengths make us slightly different.
241 For backward compatibility we are only allowed use 31 bits (2GB)
242 of our 32 bit addresses, however, we use entirely separate address
243 spaces for the user & kernel.
245 This means we can support 2GB of non Extended RAM on s/390, & more
246 with the Extended memory management swap device &
247 currently 4TB of physical memory currently on z/Architecture.
250 Address Spaces on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
251 ==================================================
253 Our addressing scheme is as follows
256 Himem 0x7fffffff 2GB on s/390 ***************** ****************
257 currently 0x3ffffffffff (2^42)-1 * User Stack * * *
258 on z/Architecture. ***************** * *
260 ***************** * *
266 0x00000000 ***************** ****************
268 This also means that we need to look at the PSW problem state bit
269 or the addressing mode to decide whether we are looking at
270 user or kernel space.
272 Virtual Addresses on s/390 & z/Architecture
273 ===========================================
275 A virtual address on s/390 is made up of 3 parts
276 The SX ( segment index, roughly corresponding to the PGD & PMD in linux terminology )
278 The PX ( page index, corresponding to the page table entry (pte) in linux terminology )
280 The remaining bits BX (the byte index are the offset in the page )
283 On z/Architecture in linux we currently make up an address from 4 parts.
284 The region index bits (RX) 0-32 we currently use bits 22-32
285 The segment index (SX) being bits 33-43
286 The page index (PX) being bits 44-51
287 The byte index (BX) being bits 52-63
290 1) s/390 has no PMD so the PMD is really the PGD also.
291 A lot of this stuff is defined in pgtable.h.
293 2) Also seeing as s/390's page indexes are only 1k in size
294 (bits 12-19 x 4 bytes per pte ) we use 1 ( page 4k )
295 to make the best use of memory by updating 4 segment indices
296 entries each time we mess with a PMD & use offsets
297 0,1024,2048 & 3072 in this page as for our segment indexes.
298 On z/Architecture our page indexes are now 2k in size
299 ( bits 12-19 x 8 bytes per pte ) we do a similar trick
300 but only mess with 2 segment indices each time we mess with
303 3) As z/Architecture supports up to a massive 5-level page table lookup we
304 can only use 3 currently on Linux ( as this is all the generic kernel
305 currently supports ) however this may change in future
306 this allows us to access ( according to my sums )
307 4TB of virtual storage per process i.e.
308 4096*512(PTES)*1024(PMDS)*2048(PGD) = 4398046511104 bytes,
309 enough for another 2 or 3 of years I think :-).
310 to do this we use a region-third-table designation type in
311 our address space control registers.
314 The Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture Kernel Task Structure
315 ==========================================================
316 Each process/thread under Linux for S390 has its own kernel task_struct
317 defined in linux/include/linux/sched.h
318 The S390 on initialisation & resuming of a process on a cpu sets
319 the __LC_KERNEL_STACK variable in the spare prefix area for this cpu
320 (which we use for per-processor globals).
322 The kernel stack pointer is intimately tied with the task structure for
323 each processor as follows.
326 ************************
327 * 1 page kernel stack *
329 ************************
330 * 1 page task_struct *
332 8K aligned ************************
335 ************************
336 * 2 page kernel stack *
338 ************************
339 * 2 page task_struct *
341 16K aligned ************************
343 What this means is that we don't need to dedicate any register or global variable
344 to point to the current running process & can retrieve it with the following
345 very simple construct for s/390 & one very similar for z/Architecture.
347 static inline struct task_struct * get_current(void)
349 struct task_struct *current;
350 __asm__("lhi %0,-8192\n\t"
356 i.e. just anding the current kernel stack pointer with the mask -8192.
357 Thankfully because Linux doesn't have support for nested IO interrupts
358 & our devices have large buffers can survive interrupts being shut for
359 short amounts of time we don't need a separate stack for interrupts.
364 Register Usage & Stackframes on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
365 =================================================================
368 This is the code that gcc produces at the top & the bottom of
369 each function. It usually is fairly consistent & similar from
370 function to function & if you know its layout you can probably
371 make some headway in finding the ultimate cause of a problem
372 after a crash without a source level debugger.
374 Note: To follow stackframes requires a knowledge of C or Pascal &
375 limited knowledge of one assembly language.
377 It should be noted that there are some differences between the
378 s/390 & z/Architecture stack layouts as the z/Architecture stack layout didn't have
379 to maintain compatibility with older linkage formats.
384 This is a built in compiler function for runtime allocation
385 of extra space on the callers stack which is obviously freed
386 up on function exit ( e.g. the caller may choose to allocate nothing
387 of a buffer of 4k if required for temporary purposes ), it generates
388 very efficient code ( a few cycles ) when compared to alternatives
391 automatics: These are local variables on the stack,
392 i.e they aren't in registers & they aren't static.
395 This is a pointer to the stack pointer before entering a
396 framed functions ( see frameless function ) prologue got by
397 dereferencing the address of the current stack pointer,
398 i.e. got by accessing the 32 bit value at the stack pointers
402 This is a pointer to the back of the literal pool which
403 is an area just behind each procedure used to store constants
406 call-clobbered: The caller probably needs to save these registers if there
407 is something of value in them, on the stack or elsewhere before making a
408 call to another procedure so that it can restore it later.
411 The code generated by the compiler to return to the caller.
414 A frameless function in Linux for s390 & z/Architecture is one which doesn't
415 need more than the register save area ( 96 bytes on s/390, 160 on z/Architecture )
416 given to it by the caller.
417 A frameless function never:
418 1) Sets up a back chain.
420 3) Calls other normal functions
424 This is a pointer to the global-offset-table in ELF
425 ( Executable Linkable Format, Linux'es most common executable format ),
426 all globals & shared library objects are found using this pointer.
429 ELF shared libraries are typically only loaded when routines in the shared
430 library are actually first called at runtime. This is lazy binding.
432 procedure-linkage-table
433 This is a table found from the GOT which contains pointers to routines
434 in other shared libraries which can't be called to by easier means.
437 The code generated by the compiler to set up the stack frame.
440 This is extra area allocated on the stack of the calling function if the
441 parameters for the callee's cannot all be put in registers, the same
442 area can be reused by each function the caller calls.
445 A COFF executable format based concept of a procedure reference
446 actually being 8 bytes or more as opposed to a simple pointer to the routine.
447 This is typically defined as follows
448 Routine Descriptor offset 0=Pointer to Function
449 Routine Descriptor offset 4=Pointer to Table of Contents
450 The table of contents/TOC is roughly equivalent to a GOT pointer.
451 & it means that shared libraries etc. can be shared between several
452 environments each with their own TOC.
455 static-chain: This is used in nested functions a concept adopted from pascal
456 by gcc not used in ansi C or C++ ( although quite useful ), basically it
457 is a pointer used to reference local variables of enclosing functions.
458 You might come across this stuff once or twice in your lifetime.
461 The function below should return 11 though gcc may get upset & toss warnings
462 about unused variables.
475 s/390 & z/Architecture Register usage
476 =====================================
477 r0 used by syscalls/assembly call-clobbered
478 r1 used by syscalls/assembly call-clobbered
479 r2 argument 0 / return value 0 call-clobbered
480 r3 argument 1 / return value 1 (if long long) call-clobbered
481 r4 argument 2 call-clobbered
482 r5 argument 3 call-clobbered
484 r7 pointer-to arguments 5 to ... saved
487 r10 static-chain ( if nested function ) saved
488 r11 frame-pointer ( if function used alloca ) saved
489 r12 got-pointer saved
490 r13 base-pointer saved
491 r14 return-address saved
492 r15 stack-pointer saved
494 f0 argument 0 / return value ( float/double ) call-clobbered
495 f2 argument 1 call-clobbered
496 f4 z/Architecture argument 2 saved
497 f6 z/Architecture argument 3 saved
498 The remaining floating points
499 f1,f3,f5 f7-f15 are call-clobbered.
503 1) The only requirement is that registers which are used
504 by the callee are saved, e.g. the compiler is perfectly
505 capable of using r11 for purposes other than a frame a
506 frame pointer if a frame pointer is not needed.
507 2) In functions with variable arguments e.g. printf the calling procedure
508 is identical to one without variable arguments & the same number of
509 parameters. However, the prologue of this function is somewhat more
510 hairy owing to it having to move these parameters to the stack to
511 get va_start, va_arg & va_end to work.
512 3) Access registers are currently unused by gcc but are used in
513 the kernel. Possibilities exist to use them at the moment for
514 temporary storage but it isn't recommended.
515 4) Only 4 of the floating point registers are used for
516 parameter passing as older machines such as G3 only have only 4
517 & it keeps the stack frame compatible with other compilers.
518 However with IEEE floating point emulation under linux on the
519 older machines you are free to use the other 12.
520 5) A long long or double parameter cannot be have the
521 first 4 bytes in a register & the second four bytes in the
522 outgoing args area. It must be purely in the outgoing args
523 area if crossing this boundary.
524 6) Floating point parameters are mixed with outgoing args
525 on the outgoing args area in the order the are passed in as parameters.
526 7) Floating point arguments 2 & 3 are saved in the outgoing args area for
533 0 0 back chain ( a 0 here signifies end of back chain )
534 4 8 eos ( end of stack, not used on Linux for S390 used in other linkage formats )
535 8 16 glue used in other s/390 linkage formats for saved routine descriptors etc.
536 12 24 glue used in other s/390 linkage formats for saved routine descriptors etc.
539 24 48 saved r6 of caller function
540 28 56 saved r7 of caller function
541 32 64 saved r8 of caller function
542 36 72 saved r9 of caller function
543 40 80 saved r10 of caller function
544 44 88 saved r11 of caller function
545 48 96 saved r12 of caller function
546 52 104 saved r13 of caller function
547 56 112 saved r14 of caller function
548 60 120 saved r15 of caller function
549 64 128 saved f4 of caller function
550 72 132 saved f6 of caller function
552 96 160 outgoing args passed from caller to callee
553 96+x 160+x possible stack alignment ( 8 bytes desirable )
554 96+x+y 160+x+y alloca space of caller ( if used )
555 96+x+y+z 160+x+y+z automatics of caller ( if used )
558 A sample program with comments.
559 ===============================
561 Comments on the function test
562 -----------------------------
563 1) It didn't need to set up a pointer to the constant pool gpr13 as it isn't used
565 2) This is a frameless function & no stack is bought.
566 3) The compiler was clever enough to recognise that it could return the
567 value in r2 as well as use it for the passed in parameter ( :-) ).
568 4) The basr ( branch relative & save ) trick works as follows the instruction
569 has a special case with r0,r0 with some instruction operands is understood as
570 the literal value 0, some risc architectures also do this ). So now
571 we are branching to the next address & the address new program counter is
572 in r13,so now we subtract the size of the function prologue we have executed
573 + the size of the literal pool to get to the top of the literal pool
574 0040037c int test(int b)
575 { # Function prologue below
576 40037c: 90 de f0 34 stm %r13,%r14,52(%r15) # Save registers r13 & r14
577 400380: 0d d0 basr %r13,%r0 # Set up pointer to constant pool using
578 400382: a7 da ff fa ahi %r13,-6 # basr trick
581 400386: a7 2a 00 05 ahi %r2,5 # add 5 to r2
583 # Function epilogue below
584 40038a: 98 de f0 34 lm %r13,%r14,52(%r15) # restore registers r13 & 14
585 40038e: 07 fe br %r14 # return
588 Comments on the function main
589 -----------------------------
590 1) The compiler did this function optimally ( 8-) )
592 Literal pool for main.
593 400390: ff ff ff ec .long 0xffffffec
594 main(int argc,char *argv[])
595 { # Function prologue below
596 400394: 90 bf f0 2c stm %r11,%r15,44(%r15) # Save necessary registers
597 400398: 18 0f lr %r0,%r15 # copy stack pointer to r0
598 40039a: a7 fa ff a0 ahi %r15,-96 # Make area for callee saving
599 40039e: 0d d0 basr %r13,%r0 # Set up r13 to point to
600 4003a0: a7 da ff f0 ahi %r13,-16 # literal pool
601 4003a4: 50 00 f0 00 st %r0,0(%r15) # Save backchain
603 return(test(5)); # Main Program Below
604 4003a8: 58 e0 d0 00 l %r14,0(%r13) # load relative address of test from
606 4003ac: a7 28 00 05 lhi %r2,5 # Set first parameter to 5
607 4003b0: 4d ee d0 00 bas %r14,0(%r14,%r13) # jump to test setting r14 as return
608 # address using branch & save instruction.
610 # Function Epilogue below
611 4003b4: 98 bf f0 8c lm %r11,%r15,140(%r15)# Restore necessary registers.
612 4003b8: 07 fe br %r14 # return to do program exit
619 main(int argc,char *argv[])
621 4004fc: 90 7f f0 1c stm %r7,%r15,28(%r15)
622 400500: a7 d5 00 04 bras %r13,400508 <main+0xc>
623 400504: 00 40 04 f4 .long 0x004004f4
624 # compiler now puts constant pool in code to so it saves an instruction
625 400508: 18 0f lr %r0,%r15
626 40050a: a7 fa ff a0 ahi %r15,-96
627 40050e: 50 00 f0 00 st %r0,0(%r15)
629 400512: 58 10 d0 00 l %r1,0(%r13)
630 400516: a7 28 00 05 lhi %r2,5
631 40051a: 0d e1 basr %r14,%r1
632 # compiler adds 1 extra instruction to epilogue this is done to
633 # avoid processor pipeline stalls owing to data dependencies on g5 &
634 # above as register 14 in the old code was needed directly after being loaded
635 # by the lm %r11,%r15,140(%r15) for the br %14.
636 40051c: 58 40 f0 98 l %r4,152(%r15)
637 400520: 98 7f f0 7c lm %r7,%r15,124(%r15)
642 Hartmut ( our compiler developer ) also has been threatening to take out the
643 stack backchain in optimised code as this also causes pipeline stalls, you
646 64 bit z/Architecture code disassembly
647 --------------------------------------
649 If you understand the stuff above you'll understand the stuff
650 below too so I'll avoid repeating myself & just say that
651 some of the instructions have g's on the end of them to indicate
652 they are 64 bit & the stack offsets are a bigger,
653 the only other difference you'll find between 32 & 64 bit is that
654 we now use f4 & f6 for floating point arguments on 64 bit.
655 00000000800005b0 <test>:
659 800005b0: a7 2a 00 05 ahi %r2,5
660 800005b4: b9 14 00 22 lgfr %r2,%r2 # downcast to integer
661 800005b8: 07 fe br %r14
662 800005ba: 07 07 bcr 0,%r7
667 00000000800005bc <main>:
668 main(int argc,char *argv[])
670 800005bc: eb bf f0 58 00 24 stmg %r11,%r15,88(%r15)
671 800005c2: b9 04 00 1f lgr %r1,%r15
672 800005c6: a7 fb ff 60 aghi %r15,-160
673 800005ca: e3 10 f0 00 00 24 stg %r1,0(%r15)
675 800005d0: a7 29 00 05 lghi %r2,5
676 # brasl allows jumps > 64k & is overkill here bras would do fune
677 800005d4: c0 e5 ff ff ff ee brasl %r14,800005b0 <test>
678 800005da: e3 40 f1 10 00 04 lg %r4,272(%r15)
679 800005e0: eb bf f0 f8 00 04 lmg %r11,%r15,248(%r15)
680 800005e6: 07 f4 br %r4
685 Compiling programs for debugging on Linux for s/390 & z/Architecture
686 ====================================================================
687 -gdwarf-2 now works it should be considered the default debugging
688 format for s/390 & z/Architecture as it is more reliable for debugging
689 shared libraries, normal -g debugging works much better now
690 Thanks to the IBM java compiler developers bug reports.
692 This is typically done adding/appending the flags -g or -gdwarf-2 to the
693 CFLAGS & LDFLAGS variables Makefile of the program concerned.
695 If using gdb & you would like accurate displays of registers &
696 stack traces compile without optimisation i.e make sure
697 that there is no -O2 or similar on the CFLAGS line of the Makefile &
698 the emitted gcc commands, obviously this will produce worse code
699 ( not advisable for shipment ) but it is an aid to the debugging process.
701 This aids debugging because the compiler will copy parameters passed in
702 in registers onto the stack so backtracing & looking at passed in
703 parameters will work, however some larger programs which use inline functions
704 will not compile without optimisation.
706 Debugging with optimisation has since much improved after fixing
707 some bugs, please make sure you are using gdb-5.0 or later developed
710 Figuring out gcc compile errors
711 ===============================
712 If you are getting a lot of syntax errors compiling a program & the problem
713 isn't blatantly obvious from the source.
714 It often helps to just preprocess the file, this is done with the -E
716 What this does is that it runs through the very first phase of compilation
717 ( compilation in gcc is done in several stages & gcc calls many programs to
718 achieve its end result ) with the -E option gcc just calls the gcc preprocessor (cpp).
719 The c preprocessor does the following, it joins all the files #included together
720 recursively ( #include files can #include other files ) & also the c file you wish to compile.
721 It puts a fully qualified path of the #included files in a comment & it
722 does macro expansion.
723 This is useful for debugging because
724 1) You can double check whether the files you expect to be included are the ones
725 that are being included ( e.g. double check that you aren't going to the i386 asm directory ).
726 2) Check that macro definitions aren't clashing with typedefs,
727 3) Check that definitions aren't being used before they are being included.
728 4) Helps put the line emitting the error under the microscope if it contains macros.
730 For convenience the Linux kernel's makefile will do preprocessing automatically for you
731 by suffixing the file you want built with .i ( instead of .o )
734 from the linux directory type
735 make arch/s390/kernel/signal.i
738 s390-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home1/barrow/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
739 -fno-strict-aliasing -D__SMP__ -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -E arch/s390/kernel/signal.c
740 > arch/s390/kernel/signal.i
742 Now look at signal.i you should see something like.
745 # 1 "/home1/barrow/linux/include/asm/types.h" 1
746 typedef unsigned short umode_t;
747 typedef __signed__ char __s8;
748 typedef unsigned char __u8;
749 typedef __signed__ short __s16;
750 typedef unsigned short __u16;
752 If instead you are getting errors further down e.g.
753 unknown instruction:2515 "move.l" or better still unknown instruction:2515
754 "Fixme not implemented yet, call Martin" you are probably are attempting to compile some code
755 meant for another architecture or code that is simply not implemented, with a fixme statement
756 stuck into the inline assembly code so that the author of the file now knows he has work to do.
757 To look at the assembly emitted by gcc just before it is about to call gas ( the gnu assembler )
759 Again for your convenience the Linux kernel's Makefile will hold your hand &
760 do all this donkey work for you also by building the file with the .s suffix.
762 from the Linux directory type
763 make arch/s390/kernel/signal.s
765 s390-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home1/barrow/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
766 -fno-strict-aliasing -D__SMP__ -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -S arch/s390/kernel/signal.c
767 -o arch/s390/kernel/signal.s
770 This will output something like, ( please note the constant pool & the useful comments
771 in the prologue to give you a hand at interpreting it ).
774 .string "misaligned (__u16 *) in __xchg\n"
776 .string "misaligned (__u32 *) in __xchg\n"
777 .L$PG1: # Pool sys_sigsuspend
783 .long schedule-.L$PG1
785 .long do_signal-.L$PG1
787 .globl sys_sigsuspend
788 .type sys_sigsuspend,@function
793 # need frame pointer 0
796 # incoming args (stack) 0
797 # function length 168
802 .L$CO1: AHI 13,.L$PG1-.L$CO1
805 N 5,.LC192-.L$PG1(13)
807 Adding -g to the above output makes the output even more useful
809 make CC:="s390-gcc -g" kernel/sched.s
812 s390-gcc -g -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/barrow/linux-2.3/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -S kernel/sched.c -o kernel/sched.s
814 also outputs stabs ( debugger ) info, from this info you can find out the
815 offsets & sizes of various elements in structures.
816 e.g. the stab for the structure
818 unsigned long rlim_cur;
819 unsigned long rlim_max;
822 .stabs "rlimit:T(151,2)=s8rlim_cur:(0,5),0,32;rlim_max:(0,5),32,32;;",128,0,0,0
823 from this stab you can see that
824 rlimit_cur starts at bit offset 0 & is 32 bits in size
825 rlimit_max starts at bit offset 32 & is 32 bits in size.
833 This is a tool with many options the most useful being ( if compiled with -g).
834 objdump --source <victim program or object file> > <victims debug listing >
837 The whole kernel can be compiled like this ( Doing this will make a 17MB kernel
838 & a 200 MB listing ) however you have to strip it before building the image
839 using the strip command to make it a more reasonable size to boot it.
841 A source/assembly mixed dump of the kernel can be done with the line
842 objdump --source vmlinux > vmlinux.lst
843 Also, if the file isn't compiled -g, this will output as much debugging information
844 as it can (e.g. function names). This is very slow as it spends lots
845 of time searching for debugging info. The following self explanatory line should be used
846 instead if the code isn't compiled -g, as it is much faster:
847 objdump --disassemble-all --syms vmlinux > vmlinux.lst
849 As hard drive space is valuable most of us use the following approach.
850 1) Look at the emitted psw on the console to find the crash address in the kernel.
851 2) Look at the file System.map ( in the linux directory ) produced when building
852 the kernel to find the closest address less than the current PSW to find the
854 3) use grep or similar to search the source tree looking for the source file
855 with this function if you don't know where it is.
856 4) rebuild this object file with -g on, as an example suppose the file was
857 ( /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o )
858 5) Assuming the file with the erroneous function is signal.c Move to the base of the
860 6) rm /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o
861 7) make /arch/s390/kernel/signal.o
862 8) watch the gcc command line emitted
863 9) type it in again or alternatively cut & paste it on the console adding the -g option.
864 10) objdump --source arch/s390/kernel/signal.o > signal.lst
865 This will output the source & the assembly intermixed, as the snippet below shows
866 This will unfortunately output addresses which aren't the same
867 as the kernel ones you should be able to get around the mental arithmetic
868 by playing with the --adjust-vma parameter to objdump.
873 static inline void spin_lock(spinlock_t *lp)
876 a2: a7 3a 03 bc ahi %r3,956
877 __asm__ __volatile(" lhi 1,-1\n"
878 a6: a7 18 ff ff lhi %r1,-1
879 aa: 1f 00 slr %r0,%r0
880 ac: ba 01 30 00 cs %r0,%r1,0(%r3)
881 b0: a7 44 ff fd jm aa <sys_sigsuspend+0x2e>
882 saveset = current->blocked;
883 b4: d2 07 f0 68 mvc 104(8,%r15),972(%r4)
885 return (set->sig[0] & mask) != 0;
888 6) If debugging under VM go down to that section in the document for more info.
891 I now have a tool which takes the pain out of --adjust-vma
892 & you are able to do something like
893 make /arch/s390/kernel/traps.lst
894 & it automatically generates the correctly relocated entries for
895 the text segment in traps.lst.
896 This tool is now standard in linux distro's in scripts/makelst
901 A. It is a tool for intercepting calls to the kernel & logging them
902 to a file & on the screen.
905 A. You can use it to find out what files a particular program opens.
911 If you wanted to know does ping work but didn't have the source
912 strace ping -c 1 127.0.0.1
913 & then look at the man pages for each of the syscalls below,
914 ( In fact this is sometimes easier than looking at some spaghetti
915 source which conditionally compiles for several architectures ).
916 Not everything that it throws out needs to make sense immediately.
918 Just looking quickly you can see that it is making up a RAW socket
919 for the ICMP protocol.
920 Doing an alarm(10) for a 10 second timeout
921 & doing a gettimeofday call before & after each read to see
922 how long the replies took, & writing some text to stdout so the user
923 has an idea what is going on.
925 socket(PF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_ICMP) = 3
928 stat("/usr/share/locale/C/libc.cat", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
929 stat("/usr/share/locale/libc/C", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
930 stat("/usr/local/share/locale/C/libc.cat", 0xbffff134) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
932 setsockopt(3, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BROADCAST, [1], 4) = 0
933 setsockopt(3, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVBUF, [49152], 4) = 0
934 fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(3, 1), ...}) = 0
935 mmap(0, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40008000
936 ioctl(1, TCGETS, {B9600 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = 0
937 write(1, "PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 d"..., 42PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
939 sigaction(SIGINT, {0x8049ba0, [], SA_RESTART}, {SIG_DFL}) = 0
940 sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}, {SIG_DFL}) = 0
941 gettimeofday({948904719, 138951}, NULL) = 0
942 sendto(3, "\10\0D\201a\1\0\0\17#\2178\307\36"..., 64, 0, {sin_family=AF_INET,
943 sin_port=htons(0), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16) = 64
944 sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}) = 0
945 sigaction(SIGALRM, {0x8049ba0, [], SA_RESTART}, {0x8049600, [], SA_RESTART}) = 0
947 recvfrom(3, "E\0\0T\0005\0\0@\1|r\177\0\0\1\177"..., 192, 0,
948 {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(50882), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, [16]) = 84
949 gettimeofday({948904719, 160224}, NULL) = 0
950 recvfrom(3, "E\0\0T\0006\0\0\377\1\275p\177\0"..., 192, 0,
951 {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(50882), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, [16]) = 84
952 gettimeofday({948904719, 166952}, NULL) = 0
953 write(1, "64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_se"...,
954 5764 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=28.0 ms
958 strace passwd 2>&1 | grep open
959 produces the following output
960 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3
961 open("/opt/kde/lib/libc.so.5", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
962 open("/lib/libc.so.5", O_RDONLY) = 3
963 open("/dev", O_RDONLY) = 3
964 open("/var/run/utmp", O_RDONLY) = 3
965 open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY) = 3
966 open("/etc/shadow", O_RDONLY) = 3
967 open("/etc/login.defs", O_RDONLY) = 4
968 open("/dev/tty", O_RDONLY) = 4
970 The 2>&1 is done to redirect stderr to stdout & grep is then filtering this input
971 through the pipe for each line containing the string open.
976 Getting sophisticated
977 telnetd crashes & I don't know why
981 1) Replace the following line in /etc/inetd.conf
982 telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/in.telnetd -h
984 telnet stream tcp nowait root /blah
986 2) Create the file /blah with the following contents to start tracing telnetd
988 /usr/bin/strace -o/t1 -f /usr/sbin/in.telnetd -h
989 3) chmod 700 /blah to make it executable only to root
992 or ps aux | grep inetd
993 get inetd's process id
994 & kill -HUP inetd to restart it.
998 -o is used to tell strace to output to a file in our case t1 in the root directory
999 -f is to follow children i.e.
1000 e.g in our case above telnetd will start the login process & subsequently a shell like bash.
1001 You will be able to tell which is which from the process ID's listed on the left hand side
1002 of the strace output.
1003 -p<pid> will tell strace to attach to a running process, yup this can be done provided
1004 it isn't being traced or debugged already & you have enough privileges,
1005 the reason 2 processes cannot trace or debug the same program is that strace
1006 becomes the parent process of the one being debugged & processes ( unlike people )
1007 can have only one parent.
1010 However the file /t1 will get big quite quickly
1011 to test it telnet 127.0.0.1
1013 now look at what files in.telnetd execve'd
1014 413 execve("/usr/sbin/in.telnetd", ["/usr/sbin/in.telnetd", "-h"], [/* 17 vars */]) = 0
1015 414 execve("/bin/login", ["/bin/login", "-h", "localhost", "-p"], [/* 2 vars */]) = 0
1022 If the program is not very interactive ( i.e. not much keyboard input )
1023 & is crashing in one architecture but not in another you can do
1024 an strace of both programs under as identical a scenario as you can
1025 on both architectures outputting to a file then.
1026 do a diff of the two traces using the diff program
1028 diff output1 output2
1029 & maybe you'll be able to see where the call paths differed, this
1030 is possibly near the cause of the crash.
1034 Look at man pages for strace & the various syscalls
1035 e.g. man strace, man alarm, man socket.
1038 Performance Debugging
1039 =====================
1040 gcc is capable of compiling in profiling code just add the -p option
1041 to the CFLAGS, this obviously affects program size & performance.
1042 This can be used by the gprof gnu profiling tool or the
1043 gcov the gnu code coverage tool ( code coverage is a means of testing
1044 code quality by checking if all the code in an executable in exercised by
1048 Using top to find out where processes are sleeping in the kernel
1049 ----------------------------------------------------------------
1050 To do this copy the System.map from the root directory where
1051 the linux kernel was built to the /boot directory on your
1055 You should see a new field called WCHAN which
1056 tells you where each process is sleeping here is a typical output.
1058 6:59pm up 41 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
1059 28 processes: 27 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
1060 CPU states: 0.0% user, 0.1% system, 0.0% nice, 99.8% idle
1061 Mem: 254900K av, 45976K used, 208924K free, 0K shrd, 28636K buff
1062 Swap: 0K av, 0K used, 0K free 8620K cached
1064 PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE WCHAN STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
1065 750 root 12 0 848 848 700 do_select S 0 0.1 0.3 0:00 in.telnetd
1066 767 root 16 0 1140 1140 964 R 0 0.1 0.4 0:00 top
1067 1 root 8 0 212 212 180 do_select S 0 0.0 0.0 0:00 init
1068 2 root 9 0 0 0 0 down_inte SW 0 0.0 0.0 0:00 kmcheck
1072 Another related command is the time command which gives you an indication
1073 of where a process is spending the majority of its time.
1086 Addresses & values in the VM debugger are always hex never decimal
1087 Address ranges are of the format <HexValue1>-<HexValue2> or <HexValue1>.<HexValue2>
1088 e.g. The address range 0x2000 to 0x3000 can be described as 2000-3000 or 2000.1000
1090 The VM Debugger is case insensitive.
1092 VM's strengths are usually other debuggers weaknesses you can get at any resource
1093 no matter how sensitive e.g. memory management resources,change address translation
1094 in the PSW. For kernel hacking you will reap dividends if you get good at it.
1096 The VM Debugger displays operators but not operands, probably because some
1097 of it was written when memory was expensive & the programmer was probably proud that
1098 it fitted into 2k of memory & the programmers & didn't want to shock hardcore VM'ers by
1099 changing the interface :-), also the debugger displays useful information on the same line &
1100 the author of the code probably felt that it was a good idea not to go over
1101 the 80 columns on the screen.
1103 As some of you are probably in a panic now this isn't as unintuitive as it may seem
1104 as the 390 instructions are easy to decode mentally & you can make a good guess at a lot
1105 of them as all the operands are nibble ( half byte aligned ) & if you have an objdump listing
1106 also it is quite easy to follow, if you don't have an objdump listing keep a copy of
1107 the s/390 Reference Summary & look at between pages 2 & 7 or alternatively the
1108 s/390 principles of operation.
1109 e.g. even I can guess that
1110 0001AFF8' LR 180F CC 0
1111 is a ( load register ) lr r0,r15
1113 Also it is very easy to tell the length of a 390 instruction from the 2 most significant
1114 bits in the instruction ( not that this info is really useful except if you are trying to
1115 make sense of a hexdump of code ).
1117 Bits Instruction Length
1118 ------------------------------------------
1127 The debugger also displays other useful info on the same line such as the
1128 addresses being operated on destination addresses of branches & condition codes.
1130 00019736' AHI A7DAFF0E CC 1
1131 000198BA' BRC A7840004 -> 000198C2' CC 0
1132 000198CE' STM 900EF068 >> 0FA95E78 CC 2
1136 Useful VM debugger commands
1137 ---------------------------
1139 I suppose I'd better mention this before I start
1140 to list the current active traces do
1142 there can be a maximum of 255 of these per set
1143 ( more about trace sets later ).
1144 To stop traces issue a
1146 To delete a particular breakpoint issue
1147 TR DEL <breakpoint number>
1149 The PA1 key drops to CP mode so you can issue debugger commands,
1150 Doing alt c (on my 3270 console at least ) clears the screen.
1151 hitting b <enter> comes back to the running operating system
1152 from cp mode ( in our case linux ).
1153 It is typically useful to add shortcuts to your profile.exec file
1154 if you have one ( this is roughly equivalent to autoexec.bat in DOS ).
1155 file here are a few from mine.
1156 /* this gives me command history on issuing f12 */
1158 /* this continues */
1160 /* goes to trace set a */
1161 set pf1 imm tr goto a
1162 /* goes to trace set b */
1163 set pf2 imm tr goto b
1164 /* goes to trace set c */
1165 set pf3 imm tr goto c
1171 Setting a simple breakpoint
1173 To debug a particular function try
1174 TR I R <function address range>
1175 TR I on its own will single step.
1176 TR I DATA <MNEMONIC> <OPTIONAL RANGE> will trace for particular mnemonics
1178 TR I DATA 4D R 0197BC.4000
1179 will trace for BAS'es ( opcode 4D ) in the range 0197BC.4000
1180 if you were inclined you could add traces for all branch instructions &
1181 suffix them with the run prefix so you would have a backtrace on screen
1182 when a program crashes.
1183 TR BR <INTO OR FROM> will trace branches into or out of an address.
1185 TR BR INTO 0 is often quite useful if a program is getting awkward & deciding
1186 to branch to 0 & crashing as this will stop at the address before in jumps to 0.
1187 TR I R <address range> RUN cmd d g
1188 single steps a range of addresses but stays running &
1189 displays the gprs on each step.
1193 Displaying & modifying Registers
1194 --------------------------------
1195 D G will display all the gprs
1196 Adding a extra G to all the commands is necessary to access the full 64 bit
1197 content in VM on z/Architecture obviously this isn't required for access registers
1198 as these are still 32 bit.
1199 e.g. DGG instead of DG
1200 D X will display all the control registers
1201 D AR will display all the access registers
1202 D AR4-7 will display access registers 4 to 7
1203 CPU ALL D G will display the GRPS of all CPUS in the configuration
1204 D PSW will display the current PSW
1205 st PSW 2000 will put the value 2000 into the PSW &
1206 cause crash your machine.
1207 D PREFIX displays the prefix offset
1212 To display memory mapped using the current PSW's mapping try
1214 To make VM display a message each time it hits a particular address & continue try
1215 D I<range> will disassemble/display a range of instructions.
1216 ST addr 32 bit word will store a 32 bit aligned address
1217 D T<range> will display the EBCDIC in an address ( if you are that way inclined )
1218 D R<range> will display real addresses ( without DAT ) but with prefixing.
1219 There are other complex options to display if you need to get at say home space
1220 but are in primary space the easiest thing to do is to temporarily
1221 modify the PSW to the other addressing mode, display the stuff & then
1228 If you want to issue a debugger command without halting your virtual machine with the
1229 PA1 key try prefixing the command with #CP e.g.
1231 also suffixing most debugger commands with RUN will cause them not
1232 to stop just display the mnemonic at the current instruction on the console.
1233 If you have several breakpoints you want to put into your program &
1234 you get fed up of cross referencing with System.map
1235 you can do the following trick for several symbols.
1236 grep do_signal System.map
1237 which emits the following among other things
1238 0001f4e0 T do_signal
1241 TR I PSWA 0001f4e0 cmd msg * do_signal
1242 This sends a message to your own console each time do_signal is entered.
1243 ( As an aside I wrote a perl script once which automatically generated a REXX
1244 script with breakpoints on every kernel procedure, this isn't a good idea
1245 because there are thousands of these routines & VM can only set 255 breakpoints
1246 at a time so you nearly had to spend as long pruning the file down as you would
1247 entering the msg's by hand ),however, the trick might be useful for a single object file.
1248 On linux'es 3270 emulator x3270 there is a very useful option under the file ment
1249 Save Screens In File this is very good of keeping a copy of traces.
1251 From CMS help <command name> will give you online help on a particular command.
1255 Also CP has a file called profile.exec which automatically gets called
1256 on startup of CMS ( like autoexec.bat ), keeping on a DOS analogy session
1257 CP has a feature similar to doskey, it may be useful for you to
1258 use profile.exec to define some keystrokes.
1261 This does a single step in VM on pressing F8.
1263 This sets up the ^ key.
1264 which can be used for ^c (ctrl-c),^z (ctrl-z) which can't be typed directly into some 3270 consoles.
1266 This types the starting keystrokes for a sysrq see SysRq below.
1268 This retrieves command history on pressing F12.
1271 Sometimes in VM the display is set up to scroll automatically this
1272 can be very annoying if there are messages you wish to look at
1275 This will nearly stop automatic screen updates, however it will
1276 cause a denial of service if lots of messages go to the 3270 console,
1277 so it would be foolish to use this as the default on a production machine.
1280 Tracing particular processes
1281 ----------------------------
1282 The kernel's text segment is intentionally at an address in memory that it will
1283 very seldom collide with text segments of user programs ( thanks Martin ),
1284 this simplifies debugging the kernel.
1285 However it is quite common for user processes to have addresses which collide
1286 this can make debugging a particular process under VM painful under normal
1287 circumstances as the process may change when doing a
1288 TR I R <address range>.
1289 Thankfully after reading VM's online help I figured out how to debug
1290 I particular process.
1292 Your first problem is to find the STD ( segment table designation )
1293 of the program you wish to debug.
1294 There are several ways you can do this here are a few
1295 1) objdump --syms <program to be debugged> | grep main
1296 To get the address of main in the program.
1297 tr i pswa <address of main>
1298 Start the program, if VM drops to CP on what looks like the entry
1299 point of the main function this is most likely the process you wish to debug.
1300 Now do a D X13 or D XG13 on z/Architecture.
1301 On 31 bit the STD is bits 1-19 ( the STO segment table origin )
1302 & 25-31 ( the STL segment table length ) of CR13.
1304 TR I R STD <CR13's value> 0.7fffffff
1306 TR I R STD 8F32E1FF 0.7fffffff
1307 Another very useful variation is
1308 TR STORE INTO STD <CR13's value> <address range>
1309 for finding out when a particular variable changes.
1311 An alternative way of finding the STD of a currently running process
1312 is to do the following, ( this method is more complex but
1313 could be quite convenient if you aren't updating the kernel much &
1314 so your kernel structures will stay constant for a reasonable period of
1317 grep task /proc/<pid>/status
1318 from this you should see something like
1319 task: 0f160000 ksp: 0f161de8 pt_regs: 0f161f68
1320 This now gives you a pointer to the task structure.
1321 Now make CC:="s390-gcc -g" kernel/sched.s
1322 To get the task_struct stabinfo.
1323 ( task_struct is defined in include/linux/sched.h ).
1324 Now we want to look at
1325 task->active_mm->pgd
1326 on my machine the active_mm in the task structure stab is
1327 active_mm:(4,12),672,32
1328 its offset is 672/8=84=0x54
1329 the pgd member in the mm_struct stab is
1330 pgd:(4,6)=*(29,5),96,32
1331 so its offset is 96/8=12=0xc
1334 hexdump -s 0xf160054 /dev/mem | more
1335 i.e. task_struct+active_mm offset
1336 to look at the active_mm member
1337 f160054 0fee cc60 0019 e334 0000 0000 0000 0011
1338 hexdump -s 0x0feecc6c /dev/mem | more
1339 i.e. active_mm+pgd offset
1340 feecc6c 0f2c 0000 0000 0001 0000 0001 0000 0010
1341 we get something like
1343 TR I R STD <pgd|0x7f> 0.7fffffff
1344 i.e. the 0x7f is added because the pgd only
1345 gives the page table origin & we need to set the low bits
1346 to the maximum possible segment table length.
1347 TR I R STD 0f2c007f 0.7fffffff
1348 on z/Architecture you'll probably need to do
1349 TR I R STD <pgd|0x7> 0.ffffffffffffffff
1350 to set the TableType to 0x1 & the Table length to 3.
1354 Tracing Program Exceptions
1355 --------------------------
1356 If you get a crash which says something like
1357 illegal operation or specification exception followed by a register dump
1358 You can restart linux & trace these using the tr prog <range or value> trace option.
1362 The most common ones you will normally be tracing for is
1363 1=operation exception
1364 2=privileged operation exception
1365 4=protection exception
1366 5=addressing exception
1367 6=specification exception
1368 10=segment translation exception
1369 11=page translation exception
1371 The full list of these is on page 22 of the current s/390 Reference Summary.
1373 tr prog 10 will trace segment translation exceptions.
1374 tr prog on its own will trace all program interruption codes.
1378 On starting VM you are initially in the INITIAL trace set.
1379 You can do a Q TR to verify this.
1380 If you have a complex tracing situation where you wish to wait for instance
1381 till a driver is open before you start tracing IO, but know in your
1382 heart that you are going to have to make several runs through the code till you
1383 have a clue whats going on.
1386 TR I PSWA <Driver open address>
1387 hit b to continue till breakpoint
1388 reach the breakpoint
1391 TR IO 7c08-7c09 inst int run
1392 or whatever the IO channels you wish to trace are & hit b
1394 To got back to the initial trace set do
1396 & the TR I PSWA <Driver open address> will be the only active breakpoint again.
1399 Tracing linux syscalls under VM
1400 -------------------------------
1401 Syscalls are implemented on Linux for S390 by the Supervisor call instruction (SVC) there 256
1402 possibilities of these as the instruction is made up of a 0xA opcode & the second byte being
1403 the syscall number. They are traced using the simple command.
1404 TR SVC <Optional value or range>
1405 the syscalls are defined in linux/arch/s390/include/asm/unistd.h
1406 e.g. to trace all file opens just do
1407 TR SVC 5 ( as this is the syscall number of open )
1410 SMP Specific commands
1411 ---------------------
1412 To find out how many cpus you have
1413 Q CPUS displays all the CPU's available to your virtual machine
1414 To find the cpu that the current cpu VM debugger commands are being directed at do
1415 Q CPU to change the current cpu VM debugger commands are being directed at do
1416 CPU <desired cpu no>
1418 On a SMP guest issue a command to all CPUs try prefixing the command with cpu all.
1419 To issue a command to a particular cpu try cpu <cpu number> e.g.
1420 CPU 01 TR I R 2000.3000
1421 If you are running on a guest with several cpus & you have a IO related problem
1422 & cannot follow the flow of code but you know it isn't smp related.
1423 from the bash prompt issue
1424 shutdown -h now or halt.
1425 do a Q CPUS to find out how many cpus you have
1426 detach each one of them from cp except cpu 0
1428 DETACH CPU 01-(number of cpus in configuration)
1430 TR SIGP will trace inter processor signal processor instructions.
1431 DEFINE CPU 01-(number in configuration)
1432 will get your guests cpus back.
1435 Help for displaying ascii textstrings
1436 -------------------------------------
1437 On the very latest VM Nucleus'es VM can now display ascii
1438 ( thanks Neale for the hint ) by doing
1445 Under older VM debuggers ( I love EBDIC too ) you can use this little program I wrote which
1446 will convert a command line of hex digits to ascii text which can be compiled under linux &
1447 you can copy the hex digits from your x3270 terminal to your xterm if you are debugging
1450 This is quite useful when looking at a parameter passed in as a text string
1451 under VM ( unless you are good at decoding ASCII in your head ).
1453 e.g. consider tracing an open syscall
1455 We have stopped at a breakpoint
1456 000151B0' SVC 0A05 -> 0001909A' CC 0
1458 D 20.8 to check the SVC old psw in the prefix area & see was it from userspace
1459 ( for the layout of the prefix area consult P18 of the s/390 390 Reference Summary
1460 if you have it available ).
1461 V00000020 070C2000 800151B2
1462 The problem state bit wasn't set & it's also too early in the boot sequence
1463 for it to be a userspace SVC if it was we would have to temporarily switch the
1464 psw to user space addressing so we could get at the first parameter of the open in
1469 Now display what gpr2 is pointing to
1471 V00014CB4 2F646576 2F636F6E 736F6C65 00001BF5
1472 V00014CC4 FC00014C B4001001 E0001000 B8070707
1473 Now copy the text till the first 00 hex ( which is the end of the string
1474 to an xterm & do hex2ascii on it.
1475 hex2ascii 2F646576 2F636F6E 736F6C65 00
1477 Decoded Hex:=/ d e v / c o n s o l e 0x00
1478 We were opening the console device,
1480 You can compile the code below yourself for practice :-),
1483 * a useful little tool for converting a hexadecimal command line to ascii
1485 * Author(s): Denis Joseph Barrow (djbarrow@de.ibm.com,barrow_dj@yahoo.com)
1486 * (C) 2000 IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, IBM Corporation.
1490 int main(int argc,char *argv[])
1492 int cnt1,cnt2,len,toggle=0;
1494 unsigned char c,hex;
1496 if(argc>1&&(strcmp(argv[1],"-a")==0))
1498 printf("Decoded Hex:=");
1499 for(cnt1=startcnt;cnt1<argc;cnt1++)
1501 len=strlen(argv[cnt1]);
1502 for(cnt2=0;cnt2<len;cnt2++)
1522 printf("0x%02X ",(int)hex);
1543 Stack tracing under VM
1544 ----------------------
1548 Here are the tricks I use 9 out of 10 times it works pretty well,
1550 When your backchain reaches a dead end
1551 --------------------------------------
1552 This can happen when an exception happens in the kernel & the kernel is entered twice
1553 if you reach the NULL pointer at the end of the back chain you should be
1554 able to sniff further back if you follow the following tricks.
1555 1) A kernel address should be easy to recognise since it is in
1556 primary space & the problem state bit isn't set & also
1557 The Hi bit of the address is set.
1558 2) Another backchain should also be easy to recognise since it is an
1559 address pointing to another address approximately 100 bytes or 0x70 hex
1560 behind the current stackpointer.
1563 Here is some practice.
1564 boot the kernel & hit PA1 at some random time
1565 d g to display the gprs, this should display something like
1566 GPR 0 = 00000001 00156018 0014359C 00000000
1567 GPR 4 = 00000001 001B8888 000003E0 00000000
1568 GPR 8 = 00100080 00100084 00000000 000FE000
1569 GPR 12 = 00010400 8001B2DC 8001B36A 000FFED8
1570 Note that GPR14 is a return address but as we are real men we are going to
1572 display 0x40 bytes after the stack pointer.
1574 V000FFED8 000FFF38 8001B838 80014C8E 000FFF38
1575 V000FFEE8 00000000 00000000 000003E0 00000000
1576 V000FFEF8 00100080 00100084 00000000 000FE000
1577 V000FFF08 00010400 8001B2DC 8001B36A 000FFED8
1580 Ah now look at whats in sp+56 (sp+0x38) this is 8001B36A our saved r14 if
1581 you look above at our stackframe & also agrees with GPR14.
1585 we now are taking the contents of SP to get our first backchain.
1587 V000FFF38 000FFFA0 00000000 00014995 00147094
1588 V000FFF48 00147090 001470A0 000003E0 00000000
1589 V000FFF58 00100080 00100084 00000000 001BF1D0
1590 V000FFF68 00010400 800149BA 80014CA6 000FFF38
1592 This displays a 2nd return address of 80014CA6
1594 now do d 000FFFA0.40 for our 3rd backchain
1596 V000FFFA0 04B52002 0001107F 00000000 00000000
1597 V000FFFB0 00000000 00000000 FF000000 0001107F
1598 V000FFFC0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
1599 V000FFFD0 00010400 80010802 8001085A 000FFFA0
1602 our 3rd return address is 8001085A
1604 as the 04B52002 looks suspiciously like rubbish it is fair to assume that the kernel entry routines
1605 for the sake of optimisation don't set up a backchain.
1607 now look at System.map to see if the addresses make any sense.
1609 grep -i 0001b3 System.map
1610 outputs among other things
1613 is cpu_idle+0x66 ( quiet the cpu is asleep, don't wake it )
1616 grep -i 00014 System.map
1617 produces among other things
1618 00014a78 T start_kernel
1619 so 0014CA6 is start_kernel+some hex number I can't add in my head.
1621 grep -i 00108 System.map
1624 so 8001085A is _stext+0x5a
1626 Congrats you've done your first backchain.
1630 s/390 & z/Architecture IO Overview
1631 ==================================
1633 I am not going to give a course in 390 IO architecture as this would take me quite a
1634 while & I'm no expert. Instead I'll give a 390 IO architecture summary for Dummies if you have
1635 the s/390 principles of operation available read this instead. If nothing else you may find a few
1636 useful keywords in here & be able to use them on a web search engine like altavista to find
1637 more useful information.
1639 Unlike other bus architectures modern 390 systems do their IO using mostly
1640 fibre optics & devices such as tapes & disks can be shared between several mainframes,
1641 also S390 can support up to 65536 devices while a high end PC based system might be choking
1642 with around 64. Here is some of the common IO terminology
1645 This is the logical number most IO commands use to talk to an IO device there can be up to
1646 0x10000 (65536) of these in a configuration typically there is a few hundred. Under VM
1647 for simplicity they are allocated contiguously, however on the native hardware they are not
1648 they typically stay consistent between boots provided no new hardware is inserted or removed.
1649 Under Linux for 390 we use these as IRQ's & also when issuing an IO command (CLEAR SUBCHANNEL,
1650 HALT SUBCHANNEL,MODIFY SUBCHANNEL,RESUME SUBCHANNEL,START SUBCHANNEL,STORE SUBCHANNEL &
1651 TEST SUBCHANNEL ) we use this as the ID of the device we wish to talk to, the most
1652 important of these instructions are START SUBCHANNEL ( to start IO ), TEST SUBCHANNEL ( to check
1653 whether the IO completed successfully ), & HALT SUBCHANNEL ( to kill IO ), a subchannel
1654 can have up to 8 channel paths to a device this offers redundancy if one is not available.
1658 This number remains static & Is closely tied to the hardware, there are 65536 of these
1659 also they are made up of a CHPID ( Channel Path ID, the most significant 8 bits )
1660 & another lsb 8 bits. These remain static even if more devices are inserted or removed
1661 from the hardware, there is a 1 to 1 mapping between Subchannels & Device Numbers provided
1662 devices aren't inserted or removed.
1664 Channel Control Words:
1665 CCWS are linked lists of instructions initially pointed to by an operation request block (ORB),
1666 which is initially given to Start Subchannel (SSCH) command along with the subchannel number
1667 for the IO subsystem to process while the CPU continues executing normal code.
1668 These come in two flavours, Format 0 ( 24 bit for backward )
1669 compatibility & Format 1 ( 31 bit ). These are typically used to issue read & write
1670 ( & many other instructions ) they consist of a length field & an absolute address field.
1671 For each IO typically get 1 or 2 interrupts one for channel end ( primary status ) when the
1672 channel is idle & the second for device end ( secondary status ) sometimes you get both
1673 concurrently, you check how the IO went on by issuing a TEST SUBCHANNEL at each interrupt,
1674 from which you receive an Interruption response block (IRB). If you get channel & device end
1675 status in the IRB without channel checks etc. your IO probably went okay. If you didn't you
1676 probably need a doctor to examine the IRB & extended status word etc.
1677 If an error occurs, more sophisticated control units have a facility known as
1678 concurrent sense this means that if an error occurs Extended sense information will
1679 be presented in the Extended status word in the IRB if not you have to issue a
1680 subsequent SENSE CCW command after the test subchannel.
1683 TPI( Test pending interrupt) can also be used for polled IO but in multitasking multiprocessor
1684 systems it isn't recommended except for checking special cases ( i.e. non looping checks for
1687 Store Subchannel & Modify Subchannel can be used to examine & modify operating characteristics
1688 of a subchannel ( e.g. channel paths ).
1690 Other IO related Terms:
1691 Sysplex: S390's Clustering Technology
1692 QDIO: S390's new high speed IO architecture to support devices such as gigabit ethernet,
1693 this architecture is also designed to be forward compatible with up & coming 64 bit machines.
1698 Input Output Processors (IOP's) are responsible for communicating between
1699 the mainframe CPU's & the channel & relieve the mainframe CPU's from the
1700 burden of communicating with IO devices directly, this allows the CPU's to
1701 concentrate on data processing.
1703 IOP's can use one or more links ( known as channel paths ) to talk to each
1704 IO device. It first checks for path availability & chooses an available one,
1705 then starts ( & sometimes terminates IO ).
1706 There are two types of channel path: ESCON & the Parallel IO interface.
1708 IO devices are attached to control units, control units provide the
1709 logic to interface the channel paths & channel path IO protocols to
1710 the IO devices, they can be integrated with the devices or housed separately
1711 & often talk to several similar devices ( typical examples would be raid
1712 controllers or a control unit which connects to 1000 3270 terminals ).
1715 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
1716 | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ |
1717 | | CPU | | CPU | | CPU | | CPU | | Main | | Expanded | |
1718 | | | | | | | | | | Memory | | Storage | |
1719 | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ |
1720 |---------------------------------------------------------------+
1722 |---------------------------------------------------------------
1723 | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C | C |
1724 ----------------------------------------------------------------
1726 || Bus & Tag Channel Path || ESCON
1727 || ====================== || Channel
1729 +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
1731 | CU | | CU | | CU |
1733 +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
1735 +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
1736 |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device| |I/O Device|
1737 +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
1738 CPU = Central Processing Unit
1743 The 390 IO systems come in 2 flavours the current 390 machines support both
1745 The Older 360 & 370 Interface,sometimes called the Parallel I/O interface,
1746 sometimes called Bus-and Tag & sometimes Original Equipment Manufacturers
1749 This byte wide Parallel channel path/bus has parity & data on the "Bus" cable
1750 & control lines on the "Tag" cable. These can operate in byte multiplex mode for
1751 sharing between several slow devices or burst mode & monopolize the channel for the
1752 whole burst. Up to 256 devices can be addressed on one of these cables. These cables are
1753 about one inch in diameter. The maximum unextended length supported by these cables is
1754 125 Meters but this can be extended up to 2km with a fibre optic channel extended
1755 such as a 3044. The maximum burst speed supported is 4.5 megabytes per second however
1756 some really old processors support only transfer rates of 3.0, 2.0 & 1.0 MB/sec.
1757 One of these paths can be daisy chained to up to 8 control units.
1760 ESCON if fibre optic it is also called FICON
1761 Was introduced by IBM in 1990. Has 2 fibre optic cables & uses either leds or lasers
1762 for communication at a signaling rate of up to 200 megabits/sec. As 10bits are transferred
1763 for every 8 bits info this drops to 160 megabits/sec & to 18.6 Megabytes/sec once
1764 control info & CRC are added. ESCON only operates in burst mode.
1766 ESCONs typical max cable length is 3km for the led version & 20km for the laser version
1767 known as XDF ( extended distance facility ). This can be further extended by using an
1768 ESCON director which triples the above mentioned ranges. Unlike Bus & Tag as ESCON is
1769 serial it uses a packet switching architecture the standard Bus & Tag control protocol
1770 is however present within the packets. Up to 256 devices can be attached to each control
1771 unit that uses one of these interfaces.
1773 Common 390 Devices include:
1774 Network adapters typically OSA2,3172's,2116's & OSA-E gigabit ethernet adapters,
1775 Consoles 3270 & 3215 ( a teletype emulated under linux for a line mode console ).
1776 DASD's direct access storage devices ( otherwise known as hard disks ).
1778 CTC ( Channel to Channel Adapters ),
1779 ESCON or Parallel Cables used as a very high speed serial link
1780 between 2 machines. We use 2 cables under linux to do a bi-directional serial link.
1783 Debugging IO on s/390 & z/Architecture under VM
1784 ===============================================
1786 Now we are ready to go on with IO tracing commands under VM
1788 A few self explanatory queries:
1791 Q DISK ( This command is CMS specific )
1799 Q OSA on my machine returns
1800 OSA 7C08 ON OSA 7C08 SUBCHANNEL = 0000
1801 OSA 7C09 ON OSA 7C09 SUBCHANNEL = 0001
1802 OSA 7C14 ON OSA 7C14 SUBCHANNEL = 0002
1803 OSA 7C15 ON OSA 7C15 SUBCHANNEL = 0003
1805 If you have a guest with certain privileges you may be able to see devices
1806 which don't belong to you. To avoid this, add the option V.
1810 Now using the device numbers returned by this command we will
1811 Trace the io starting up on the first device 7c08 & 7c09
1812 In our simplest case we can trace the
1814 like TR SSCH 7C08-7C09
1815 or the halt subchannels
1816 or TR HSCH 7C08-7C09
1817 MSCH's ,STSCH's I think you can guess the rest
1819 Ingo's favourite trick is tracing all the IO's & CCWS & spooling them into the reader of another
1820 VM guest so he can ftp the logfile back to his own machine.I'll do a small bit of this & give you
1821 a look at the output.
1823 1) Spool stdout to VM reader
1824 SP PRT TO (another vm guest ) or * for the local vm guest
1825 2) Fill the reader with the trace
1826 TR IO 7c08-7c09 INST INT CCW PRT RUN
1833 6) list reader contents
1835 7) copy it to linux4's minidisk
1836 RECEIVE / LOG TXT A1 ( replace
1838 filel & press F11 to look at it
1839 You should see something like:
1841 00020942' SSCH B2334000 0048813C CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
1842 CPA 000FFDF0 PARM 00E2C9C4 KEY 0 FPI C0 LPM 80
1843 CCW 000FFDF0 E4200100 00487FE8 0000 E4240100 ........
1846 00020B0A' I/O DEV 7C08 -> 000197BC' SCH 0000 PARM 00E2C9C4
1847 00021628' TSCH B2354000 >> 00488164 CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
1848 CCWA 000FFDF8 DEV STS 0C SCH STS 00 CNT 00EC
1849 KEY 0 FPI C0 CC 0 CTLS 4007
1850 00022238' STSCH B2344000 >> 00488108 CC 0 SCH 0000 DEV 7C08
1852 If you don't like messing up your readed ( because you possibly booted from it )
1853 you can alternatively spool it to another readers guest.
1856 Other common VM device related commands
1857 ---------------------------------------------
1858 These commands are listed only because they have
1859 been of use to me in the past & may be of use to
1860 you too. For more complete info on each of the commands
1861 use type HELP <command> from CMS.
1864 ATT <devno range> <guest>
1865 attach a device to guest * for your own guest
1866 READY <devno> cause VM to issue a fake interrupt.
1868 The VARY command is normally only available to VM administrators.
1869 VARY ON PATH <path> TO <devno range>
1870 VARY OFF PATH <PATH> FROM <devno range>
1871 This is used to switch on or off channel paths to devices.
1873 Q CHPID <channel path ID>
1874 This displays state of devices using this channel path
1875 D SCHIB <subchannel>
1876 This displays the subchannel information SCHIB block for the device.
1877 this I believe is also only available to administrators.
1879 defines a virtual CTC channel to channel connection
1880 2 need to be defined on each guest for the CTC driver to use.
1881 COUPLE devno userid remote devno
1882 Joins a local virtual device to a remote virtual device
1883 ( commonly used for the CTC driver ).
1885 Building a VM ramdisk under CMS which linux can use
1886 def vfb-<blocksize> <subchannel> <number blocks>
1887 blocksize is commonly 4096 for linux.
1889 format <subchannel> <driver letter e.g. x> (blksize <blocksize>
1891 Sharing a disk between multiple guests
1892 LINK userid devno1 devno2 mode password
1898 N.B. if compiling for debugging gdb works better without optimisation
1899 ( see Compiling programs for debugging )
1903 gdb <victim program> <optional corefile>
1907 help: gives help on commands
1911 Note gdb's online help is very good use it.
1916 info registers: displays registers other than floating point.
1917 info all-registers: displays floating points as well.
1918 disassemble: disassembles
1920 disassemble without parameters will disassemble the current function
1921 disassemble $pc $pc+10
1923 Viewing & modifying variables
1924 -----------------------------
1925 print or p: displays variable or register
1926 e.g. p/x $sp will display the stack pointer
1928 display: prints variable or register each time program stops
1930 display/x $pc will display the program counter
1933 undisplay : undo's display's
1935 info breakpoints: shows all current breakpoints
1937 info stack: shows stack back trace ( if this doesn't work too well, I'll show you the
1938 stacktrace by hand below ).
1940 info locals: displays local variables.
1942 info args: display current procedure arguments.
1944 set args: will set argc & argv each time the victim program is invoked.
1946 set <variable>=value
1954 step: steps n lines of sourcecode
1956 step 100 steps 100 lines of code.
1958 next: like step except this will not step into subroutines
1960 stepi: steps a single machine code instruction.
1963 nexti: steps a single machine code instruction but will not step into subroutines.
1965 finish: will run until exit of the current routine
1967 run: (re)starts a program
1969 cont: continues a program
1987 heres a really useful one for large programs
1989 Set a breakpoint for all functions matching REGEXP
1992 will set a breakpoint with all functions with 390 in their name.
1995 lists all breakpoints
1997 delete: delete breakpoint by number or delete them all
1999 delete 1 will delete the first breakpoint
2000 delete will delete them all
2002 watch: This will set a watchpoint ( usually hardware assisted ),
2003 This will watch a variable till it changes
2005 watch cnt, will watch the variable cnt till it changes.
2006 As an aside unfortunately gdb's, architecture independent watchpoint code
2007 is inconsistent & not very good, watchpoints usually work but not always.
2009 info watchpoints: Display currently active watchpoints
2011 condition: ( another useful one )
2012 Specify breakpoint number N to break only if COND is true.
2013 Usage is `condition N COND', where N is an integer and COND is an
2014 expression to be evaluated whenever breakpoint N is reached.
2018 User defined functions/macros
2019 -----------------------------
2020 define: ( Note this is very very useful,simple & powerful )
2021 usage define <name> <list of commands> end
2023 examples which you should consider putting into .gdbinit in your home directory
2026 disassemble $pc $pc+10
2031 disassemble $pc $pc+10
2035 Other hard to classify stuff
2036 ----------------------------
2038 sends the victim program a signal.
2039 e.g. signal 3 will send a SIGQUIT.
2042 what gdb does when the victim receives certain signals.
2046 list lists current function source
2047 list 1,10 list first 10 lines of current file.
2052 Adds directories to be searched for source if gdb cannot find the source.
2053 (note it is a bit sensitive about slashes)
2054 e.g. To add the root of the filesystem to the searchpath do
2059 This calls a function in the victim program, this is pretty powerful
2061 (gdb) call printf("hello world")
2065 You might now be thinking that the line above didn't work, something extra had to be done.
2066 (gdb) call fflush(stdout)
2068 As an aside the debugger also calls malloc & free under the hood
2069 to make space for the "hello world" string.
2075 1) command completion works just like bash
2076 ( if you are a bad typist like me this really helps )
2077 e.g. hit br <TAB> & cursor up & down :-).
2079 2) if you have a debugging problem that takes a few steps to recreate
2080 put the steps into a file called .gdbinit in your current working directory
2081 if you have defined a few extra useful user defined commands put these in
2082 your home directory & they will be read each time gdb is launched.
2084 A typical .gdbinit file might be.
2087 break runtime_exception
2091 stack chaining in gdb by hand
2092 -----------------------------
2093 This is done using a the same trick described for VM
2094 p/x (*($sp+56))&0x7fffffff get the first backchain.
2097 Replace 56 with 112 & ignore the &0x7fffffff
2098 in the macros below & do nasty casts to longs like the following
2099 as gdb unfortunately deals with printed arguments as ints which
2100 messes up everything.
2101 i.e. here is a 3rd backchain dereference
2102 p/x *(long *)(***(long ***)$sp+112)
2109 info symbol (*($sp+56))&0x7fffffff
2110 you might see something like.
2111 rl_getc + 36 in section .text telling you what is located at address 0x528f18
2113 p/x (*(*$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
2117 info symbol (*(*$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
2118 rl_read_key + 180 in section .text
2120 p/x (*(**$sp+56))&0x7fffffff
2123 Disassembling instructions without debug info
2124 ---------------------------------------------
2125 gdb typically complains if there is a lack of debugging
2126 symbols in the disassemble command with
2127 "No function contains specified address." To get around
2129 x/<number lines to disassemble>xi <address>
2135 Note: Remember gdb has history just like bash you don't need to retype the
2136 whole line just use the up & down arrows.
2142 From your linuxbox do
2143 man gdb or info gdb.
2148 A core dump is a file generated by the kernel ( if allowed ) which contains the registers,
2149 & all active pages of the program which has crashed.
2150 From this file gdb will allow you to look at the registers & stack trace & memory of the
2151 program as if it just crashed on your system, it is usually called core & created in the
2152 current working directory.
2153 This is very useful in that a customer can mail a core dump to a technical support department
2154 & the technical support department can reconstruct what happened.
2155 Provided they have an identical copy of this program with debugging symbols compiled in &
2156 the source base of this build is available.
2157 In short it is far more useful than something like a crash log could ever hope to be.
2159 In theory all that is missing to restart a core dumped program is a kernel patch which
2160 will do the following.
2161 1) Make a new kernel task structure
2162 2) Reload all the dumped pages back into the kernel's memory management structures.
2163 3) Do the required clock fixups
2164 4) Get all files & network connections for the process back into an identical state ( really difficult ).
2165 5) A few more difficult things I haven't thought of.
2169 Why have I never seen one ?.
2170 Probably because you haven't used the command
2171 ulimit -c unlimited in bash
2172 to allow core dumps, now do
2174 to verify that the limit was accepted.
2177 To create this I'm going to do
2180 to launch gdb (my victim app. ) now be bad & do the following from another
2181 telnet/xterm session to the same machine
2183 kill -SIGSEGV <gdb's pid>
2184 or alternatively use killall -SIGSEGV gdb if you have the killall command.
2185 Now look at the core dump.
2187 Displays the following
2189 Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2190 GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
2191 welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
2192 Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
2193 There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
2194 This GDB was configured as "s390-ibm-linux"...
2195 Core was generated by `./gdb'.
2196 Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
2197 Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4...done.
2198 Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.6...done.
2199 Reading symbols from /lib/libc.so.6...done.
2200 Reading symbols from /lib/ld-linux.so.2...done.
2201 #0 0x40126d1a in read () from /lib/libc.so.6
2202 Setting up the environment for debugging gdb.
2203 Breakpoint 1 at 0x4dc6f8: file utils.c, line 471.
2204 Breakpoint 2 at 0x4d87a4: file top.c, line 2609.
2205 (top-gdb) info stack
2206 #0 0x40126d1a in read () from /lib/libc.so.6
2207 #1 0x528f26 in rl_getc (stream=0x7ffffde8) at input.c:402
2208 #2 0x528ed0 in rl_read_key () at input.c:381
2209 #3 0x5167e6 in readline_internal_char () at readline.c:454
2210 #4 0x5168ee in readline_internal_charloop () at readline.c:507
2211 #5 0x51692c in readline_internal () at readline.c:521
2212 #6 0x5164fe in readline (prompt=0x7ffff810 "\177ÿøx\177ÿ÷Ø\177ÿøxÀ")
2214 #7 0x4d7a8a in command_line_input (prrompt=0x564420 "(gdb) ", repeat=1,
2215 annotation_suffix=0x4d6b44 "prompt") at top.c:2091
2216 #8 0x4d6cf0 in command_loop () at top.c:1345
2217 #9 0x4e25bc in main (argc=1, argv=0x7ffffdf4) at main.c:635
2222 This is a program which lists the shared libraries which a library needs,
2223 Note you also get the relocations of the shared library text segments which
2224 help when using objdump --source.
2228 libncurses.so.4 => /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4 (0x40018000)
2229 libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4005e000)
2230 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40084000)
2231 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
2234 Debugging shared libraries
2235 ==========================
2236 Most programs use shared libraries, however it can be very painful
2237 when you single step instruction into a function like printf for the
2238 first time & you end up in functions like _dl_runtime_resolve this is
2239 the ld.so doing lazy binding, lazy binding is a concept in ELF where
2240 shared library functions are not loaded into memory unless they are
2241 actually used, great for saving memory but a pain to debug.
2242 To get around this either relink the program -static or exit gdb type
2243 export LD_BIND_NOW=true this will stop lazy binding & restart the gdb'ing
2244 the program in question.
2250 As modules are dynamically loaded into the kernel their address can be
2251 anywhere to get around this use the -m option with insmod to emit a load
2252 map which can be piped into a file if required.
2254 The proc file system
2255 ====================
2257 It is a filesystem created by the kernel with files which are created on demand
2258 by the kernel if read, or can be used to modify kernel parameters,
2259 it is a powerful concept.
2263 cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
2264 On my machine outputs
2266 telling me ip_forwarding is not on to switch it on I can do
2267 echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
2269 cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
2270 On my machine now outputs
2272 IP forwarding is on.
2273 There is a lot of useful info in here best found by going in & having a look around,
2274 so I'll take you through some entries I consider important.
2276 All the processes running on the machine have there own entry defined by
2278 So lets have a look at the init process
2286 This contains numerical entries of all the open files,
2287 some of these you can cat e.g. stdout (2)
2292 00400000-00478000 r-xp 00000000 5f:00 4103 /bin/bash
2293 00478000-0047e000 rw-p 00077000 5f:00 4103 /bin/bash
2294 0047e000-00492000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0
2295 40000000-40015000 r-xp 00000000 5f:00 14382 /lib/ld-2.1.2.so
2296 40015000-40016000 rw-p 00014000 5f:00 14382 /lib/ld-2.1.2.so
2297 40016000-40017000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0
2298 40017000-40018000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
2299 40018000-4001b000 r-xp 00000000 5f:00 14435 /lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8
2300 4001b000-4001c000 rw-p 00002000 5f:00 14435 /lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8
2301 4001c000-4010d000 r-xp 00000000 5f:00 14387 /lib/libc-2.1.2.so
2302 4010d000-40111000 rw-p 000f0000 5f:00 14387 /lib/libc-2.1.2.so
2303 40111000-40114000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
2304 40114000-4011e000 r-xp 00000000 5f:00 14408 /lib/libnss_files-2.1.2.so
2305 4011e000-4011f000 rw-p 00009000 5f:00 14408 /lib/libnss_files-2.1.2.so
2306 7fffd000-80000000 rwxp ffffe000 00:00 0
2309 Showing us the shared libraries init uses where they are in memory
2310 & memory access permissions for each virtual memory area.
2312 /proc/1/cwd is a softlink to the current working directory.
2313 /proc/1/root is the root of the filesystem for this process.
2315 /proc/1/mem is the current running processes memory which you
2316 can read & write to like a file.
2317 strace uses this sometimes as it is a bit faster than the
2318 rather inefficient ptrace interface for peeking at DATA.
2337 SigPnd: 0000000000000000
2338 SigBlk: 0000000000000000
2339 SigIgn: 7fffffffd7f0d8fc
2340 SigCgt: 00000000280b2603
2341 CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
2342 CapPrm: 00000000ffffffff
2343 CapEff: 00000000fffffeff
2345 User PSW: 070de000 80414146
2346 task: 004b6000 tss: 004b62d8 ksp: 004b7ca8 pt_regs: 004b7f68
2348 00000400 00000000 0000000b 7ffffa90
2349 00000000 00000000 00000000 0045d9f4
2350 0045cafc 7ffffa90 7fffff18 0045cb08
2351 00010400 804039e8 80403af8 7ffff8b0
2353 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
2354 00000001 00000000 00000000 00000000
2355 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
2356 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
2357 Kernel BackChain CallChain BackChain CallChain
2358 004b7ca8 8002bd0c 004b7d18 8002b92c
2359 004b7db8 8005cd50 004b7e38 8005d12a
2361 Showing among other things memory usage & status of some signals &
2362 the processes'es registers from the kernel task_structure
2363 as well as a backchain which may be useful if a process crashes
2364 in the kernel for some unknown reason.
2366 Some driver debugging techniques
2367 ================================
2370 Some of our drivers now support a "debug feature" in
2371 /proc/s390dbf see s390dbf.txt in the linux/Documentation directory
2374 to switch on the lcs "debug feature"
2375 echo 5 > /proc/s390dbf/lcs/level
2376 & then after the error occurred.
2377 cat /proc/s390dbf/lcs/sprintf >/logfile
2378 the logfile now contains some information which may help
2379 tech support resolve a problem in the field.
2383 high level debugging network drivers
2384 ------------------------------------
2385 ifconfig is a quite useful command
2386 it gives the current state of network drivers.
2388 If you suspect your network device driver is dead
2389 one way to check is type
2390 ifconfig <network device>
2392 You should see something like
2393 tr0 Link encap:16/4 Mbps Token Ring (New) HWaddr 00:04:AC:20:8E:48
2394 inet addr:9.164.185.132 Bcast:9.164.191.255 Mask:255.255.224.0
2395 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:2000 Metric:1
2396 RX packets:246134 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
2397 TX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
2398 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
2400 if the device doesn't say up
2402 /etc/rc.d/init.d/network start
2403 ( this starts the network stack & hopefully calls ifconfig tr0 up ).
2404 ifconfig looks at the output of /proc/net/dev & presents it in a more presentable form
2405 Now ping the device from a machine in the same subnet.
2406 if the RX packets count & TX packets counts don't increment you probably
2410 Do you see any hardware addresses in the cache if not you may have problems.
2412 ping -c 5 <broadcast_addr> i.e. the Bcast field above in the output of
2413 ifconfig. Do you see any replies from machines other than the local machine
2414 if not you may have problems. also if the TX packets count in ifconfig
2415 hasn't incremented either you have serious problems in your driver
2416 (e.g. the txbusy field of the network device being stuck on )
2417 or you may have multiple network devices connected.
2422 There is a new device layer for channel devices, some
2423 drivers e.g. lcs are registered with this layer.
2424 If the device uses the channel device layer you'll be
2425 able to find what interrupts it uses & the current state
2427 See the manpage chandev.8 &type cat /proc/chandev for more info.
2431 Starting points for debugging scripting languages etc.
2432 ======================================================
2436 bash -x <scriptname>
2437 e.g. bash -x /usr/bin/bashbug
2438 displays the following lines as it executes them.
2442 + CFLAGS= -DPROGRAM='bash' -DHOSTTYPE='i586' -DOSTYPE='linux-gnu' -DMACHTYPE='i586-pc-linux-gnu' -DSHELL -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I./lib -O2 -pipe
2446 + MACHTYPE=i586-pc-linux-gnu
2448 perl -d <scriptname> runs the perlscript in a fully interactive debugger
2450 Type 'h' in the debugger for help.
2452 for debugging java type
2453 jdb <filename> another fully interactive gdb style debugger.
2454 & type ? in the debugger for help.
2458 Dumptool & Lcrash ( lkcd )
2459 ==========================
2460 Michael Holzheu & others here at IBM have a fairly mature port of
2461 SGI's lcrash tool which allows one to look at kernel structures in a
2464 It also complements a tool called dumptool which dumps all the kernel's
2465 memory pages & registers to either a tape or a disk.
2466 This can be used by tech support or an ambitious end user do
2467 post mortem debugging of a machine like gdb core dumps.
2469 Going into how to use this tool in detail will be explained
2470 in other documentation supplied by IBM with the patches & the
2471 lcrash homepage http://oss.sgi.com/projects/lkcd/ & the lcrash manpage.
2475 Lcrash is a perfectly normal program,however, it requires 2
2476 additional files, Kerntypes which is built using a patch to the
2477 linux kernel sources in the linux root directory & the System.map.
2479 Kerntypes is an objectfile whose sole purpose in life
2480 is to provide stabs debug info to lcrash, to do this
2481 Kerntypes is built from kerntypes.c which just includes the most commonly
2482 referenced header files used when debugging, lcrash can then read the
2483 .stabs section of this file.
2485 Debugging a live system it uses /dev/mem
2486 alternatively for post mortem debugging it uses the data
2487 collected by dumptool.
2493 This is now supported by linux for s/390 & z/Architecture.
2494 To enable it do compile the kernel with
2495 Kernel Hacking -> Magic SysRq Key Enabled
2496 echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
2498 echo "8" >/proc/sys/kernel/printk
2499 To make printk output go to console.
2500 On 390 all commands are prefixed with
2503 ^-t will show tasks.
2504 ^-? or some unknown command will display help.
2505 The sysrq key reading is very picky ( I have to type the keys in an
2506 xterm session & paste them into the x3270 console )
2507 & it may be wise to predefine the keys as described in the VM hints above
2509 This is particularly useful for syncing disks unmounting & rebooting
2510 if the machine gets partially hung.
2512 Read Documentation/sysrq.txt for more info
2516 Enterprise Systems Architecture Reference Summary
2517 Enterprise Systems Architecture Principles of Operation
2518 Hartmut Penners s390 stack frame sheet.
2519 IBM Mainframe Channel Attachment a technology brief from a CISCO webpage
2520 Various bits of man & info pages of Linux.
2522 Various info & man pages.
2523 CMS Help on tracing commands.
2524 Linux for s/390 Elf Application Binary Interface
2525 Linux for z/Series Elf Application Binary Interface ( Both Highly Recommended )
2526 z/Architecture Principles of Operation SA22-7832-00
2527 Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 Reference Summary SA22-7209-01 & the
2528 Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 Principles of Operation SA22-7201-05
2532 Special thanks to Neale Ferguson who maintains a much
2533 prettier HTML version of this page at
2534 http://penguinvm.princeton.edu/notes.html#Debug390
2535 Bob Grainger Stefan Bader & others for reporting bugs